Bowsy

BOWSY

Connecting Students and Employers

Remote work experience platform Bowsy is connecting a diverse cohort of students with paid work experience opportunities in both small and large companies

John Brady, CEO and Co-founder of Bowsy, Lorna McMullan, Head of Marketing, and Renata Covisi Pereira, Head of Product & Operations

Being a small start-up has not stopped Bowsy making a national impact, with the launch of their Graduate Diversity programme, which helps small businesses to connect with final year university students from across the country through remote project work. After only 18 months, Bowsy is now working with over 90 per cent of the third level institutions across the country, and university students in Ireland have already helped hundreds of small businesses through the Bowsy platform.

The idea behind the initiative is simple; final year university students are looking for relevant work experience that can help them at the start of their careers and on the other side there are many small businesses who are struggling to connect with graduate talent that can help their businesses. This is where Bowsy comes in, providing a one-stop, remote working platform that allows small businesses to post projects and students to get paid remote work experience.

Not surprisingly, students can support a huge range of different project work and if someone is studying it, it can be done through the Bowsy platform. According to Lorna McMullan, Head of Marketing at Bowsy, “The most common projects performed are usually around website development, content creation, social media management, graphic design, constructing business plans or devising marketing strategies. But each day there is something new. Last month we had architecture students doing floor plans for a hotel and during Covid-19 we had students helping small businesses with grant and business relief applications which still goes on today. Social media management & Advertising has been a particularly popular area for businesses on Bowsy seeking university student support. Leveraging this digital-native, savvy student workforce has helped many small businesses across Ireland scale online.

As part of the launch, Bowsy ran several campaigns and webinars to address specific challenges that small businesses were facing. During the lockdown, Bowsy ran several webinars for rural businesses with the objective of connecting them with students who could help get their business online with tools like Shopify. Similarly, Bowsy ran several campaigns aimed at start-ups across the country who could now connect with a talented and flexible workforce.

Another exciting development has been the use of the Bowsy platform as a recruitment tool for small businesses. According to Renata Covisi who is Head of Operations at Bowsy, “Students can often default to looking for employment amongst larger employers, but we have several case studies where students started off doing project work for a small business and ended up getting a full-time job. Through remote project work with a small business, students are exposed to new areas and opportunities that they might not have originally considered and very quickly see the benefits of getting broader responsibilities when working for a small sized business”.

BOWSY

Talent Summit at the Convention Centre Dublin, where Bowsy was a finalist

STUDENTS FACE DIFFERENT BARRIERS TO GETTING TRADITIONAL WORK EXPERIENCE WHICH CAN VARY GREATLY DEPENDING ON WHERE A STUDENT LIVES, WHERE THEY ARE STUDYING, THEIR SOCIO-ECONOMIC BACKGROUND

SOCIAL CAUSE There is also a strong social cause at the heart of Bowsy which is to create equality of opportunity for all Irish students, as John Brady, CEO of Bowsy, explains “Many students face different barriers to getting traditional work experience which can vary greatly depending on where a student lives, where they are studying, their socio-economic background or even if their family has access to an employer network. Bowsy helps address this and is focused on providing remote work experience opportunities that are open to all students. This helps them build their CV, address practical skills gaps and create their employer network while they are in their final year of university.”

As part of this strong focus on creating equality of opportunity for Irish students, Bowsy rolled out a Diversity Launch, specifically aimed at larger employers who are trying to improve the diversity in their graduate recruitment pipeline. Bowsy created a national student ambassador programme to ensure that their platform was representative of the diverse student population across Ireland. Lorna McMullan explains, “Our ambassadors come from key student communities that are facing particular challenges such as students with disabilities, students from low socio economic backgrounds, the LGBTQ student community and refugees. Employers can now use the platform to connect with students from diverse backgrounds that may not normally apply for a graduate role in their company. The idea is not to replace a company’s existing graduate recruitment programme but to improve the diversity of talent that feeds their graduate recruitment pipeline.”

To better understand the challenges, Bowsy commissioned a national study amongst recent graduates in Ireland which found that 89 per cent of students are not happy with the current graduate recruitment process and that 29 per cent of students felt that they had been indirectly discriminated by some employers during the recruitment process. Renata Covisi notes, “There is a very strong student mandate for change and the Bowsy diversity programme represents a significant opportunity for companies to address this. Through Bowsy, employers can reach students, that normally do not engage with them, to improve the diversity in their graduate recruitment. In the same research study, we also asked students what was the number one change that they would like to see and it wasn’t more graduate fairs or more internships—the number one change that Irish graduates would like to see is access to remote work experience.”

Bowsy has also received significant external recognition for the work that they are doing to help students and the company was named as Tech Start-up of the Year at the National Irish Start-up Awards as well as being a finalist in this year’s Talent Summit which was the largest HR event in Europe this year.

John Brady adds, “Everyone in the Bowsy team is super proud that we have been nominated in two categories for our efforts as a small business and also for our work on diversity. We are very excited that Bowsy is making a positive change for both business and students and we looking forward to great things to come.”